


Samothes Meets the Shadow Boy Samot

by 3RatMoon



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 13:29:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3RatMoon/pseuds/3RatMoon
Summary: The first time that Samothes met Samot, he went by a different name. They both did; Time is long, and mortal folk change much more quickly than gods do.





	Samothes Meets the Shadow Boy Samot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imperialhare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhare/gifts).



> Linda declared that all samsam made during August is for her birthday, so happy birthday! ;P
> 
> Never beta'd because I live wild

The first time that Samothes met Samot, he went by a different name. They both did; Time is long, and mortal folk change much more quickly than gods do.

Samothes had come to visit his father, the God of the Land, Hieron Itself, at his usual perch in the forests to the south. As the God-King travelled through the woods, though, he felt that he was being watched. He kept seeing flickers of movement in the corner of his eye, but when he would turn around, drawing his shining blade, there was nothing.

It continued on like this until Samothes finally came upon his father, the God Samol, sitting in the forest as he always was. Samothes was stunned, he was agitated and upset by his troubling travels, yet here was his father completely unbothered!

“Father, there was something following me in the forest!” Samothes told him, “Not a one of Severea’s creatures fears me, but they go not near me either. This one follows me and evades my sight like a shadow!”

“Ah,” said Samol, with a look of understanding, then turned in his seat, looking in the direction Samothes had walked.

“Boy! Come here!” he called out into the woods.

Samothes saw that flicker of movement again, from tree to tree, approaching them, and he watched with gritted teeth, hand ready to draw his sword. But then the movement stopped, and a face slowly peered from behind a large birch close to Samol’s perch. It hardly looked like a boy at all, a small and scraggly thing covered in furs and watching them with bright, shining eyes.

“What is that?” Samothes asked.

Samol didn’t respond to him, instead asking the thing, “Boy, were you following my son Samothes here?”

The ragged creature ducked behind the tree a little, watching them still.

Samol turned back to Samothes with an amused grin. “Well, there’s your shadow.”

Recognition rushed over the God-King, followed quickly by anger.

“Is that the thing that took Severea?” he shouted, “Father, what is he  _ doing _ here?!”

The wolf boy had disappeared the moment he sensed trouble, and Samothes looked

wildly around him, trying to spot him in the trees.

Samol stood with a sigh, putting a hand of Samothes’s where it gripped his hilt. “Calm your fire, boy. He isn’t going to hurt you.”

Samothes was shocked. “He isn’t going to  _ hurt  _ us? Father, he  _ killed _ Severea! Almost forever! He’s dangerous!”

Samothes tried to step back from his father, but the hand on his wrist tightened. The forest darkened despite the clear day, as if the trees had all suddenly drawn in closer. It was rare for Samothes to draw Samol’s ire, and frightened, he stilled.

“You think I have forgotten?” the World Made Flesh asked, voice low, “You think I don’t know? Boy, there ain’t a thing I  _ don’t _ know.”

Samothes was quiet for a long moment, but then he lowered his blade and averted his eyes.

Samol sighed. “Now, what did you come here to see me for?”

The shadow boy didn’t appear for the rest of Samothes’s visit, but Samothes saw him many more times over many more visits to his father. The creature, who Samol sometimes called The Boy Who Apologized, didn’t seem to wander far from his sitting places. Over time, he became less reclusive, not necessarily interacting much with Samol’s guests, but not hiding, either. He responded to Samol’s questions with a look, or one or two words on a good day. Always, he watched, intensely. He watched everything as if he was trying to memorize every word and movement. It unsettled Samothes; it reminded him too much of the boy’s original form, made of nothing but the impulse to devour. 

That’s probably how he first learned speech, Samothes thought with a shudder.

Eventually, Samol was able to convince the boy to get a haircut and different clothes. He looked much more like a boy now, even a prince, all golden blonde waves and fine blue linen that matched his eyes. He couldn’t entirely abandon his furs though; he wore a cloak of it close around his shoulders, like the people of the villages near the mountains where snow would reach.

The boy had a new name, too— Samot, Knower of Things. Samol was talking about sending him to the village near the forest, to be around mortal folk and be taught by them.

“Those are  _ my _ people!” Samothes complained when he heard the news.

“Oh?” Samol responded, “And whose trees do your people cut for wood? Whose earth to they till to grow their food? Whose creatures were tamed to aid them? Whose roads do they use for trade? Your People.”

Samothes crossed his arms in frustration, and it made Severea laugh.

“He’s right, you know,” she said.

“No longer being the youngest is hard,” Galencia commented, in some defense of the King-God. The Shield of Hieron had been the youngest of the gods before Samothes, then Severia before them, though it had been a very long time for both of them.

“He is not a child any longer, Galencia,” Samol responded sternly.

Samothes huffed and left the gathering after that.

Still, the God-King couldn’t ignore the presence of Samot. He was being mentored in the village by the priest Christopher. The village didn’t know, but the guilt radiated off of the man. Samothes, pettily, didn’t respond to Christopher’s calls for guidance. The priest knew, in his heart of hearts, that his god would not approve, so why give confirmation?

Samot started to travel again for the first time since he became material, wandering north beyond the boundaries of Samol’s forest. Samothes tried to pretend that he didn't care about where Samot was going, continuing on with his own work. But Samothes wanted to know why the Knower of Things was being so quiet in the village. Beyond his presence in the church, he hardly made an impression. It kept gnawing at him, and eventually one night, when Samot had returned to Christopher’s chapel after another journey, Samothes approached him alone in his room.

“Samothes,” Samot sounded genuinely surprised, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The God-King studied Samot. He had changed significantly since last time they were face to face, and it wasn’t only that he was more chatty than before. The boy’s hair reached his shoulders, now, and we was wearing a simple silver circlet. He was older. He leaned back in his chair with a kind of ease that was very much unlike his previous self, and he smiled readily.

Samothes wasn't sure how he felt about it. “Where do you go when you travel?” he asked.

Samot raised his eyebrows, which was perhaps the most familiar gesture Samothes had seen from him. The boy always had that kind of look, like he had many opinions about everything, but was choosing not to voice them. Just the smile was new.

“I have been traveling north to the mountains. There are people there that I have gotten to know who I am fond of,” Samot answered, “They make this kind of wine out of wild berries and honey… it’s quite lovely. I had only tasted what Christopher offered me from his modest cellar before. It makes me want to try more.”

Samothes felt the shiver of power underneath Samot’s words. The boy had always been powerful in ways unlike mortal folk, but Samothes hadn’t felt something like Godhood in him before. He frowned.

“Why travel so far? Why not see the people in the village?” asked Ingenuity Alive.

“Oh,” Samot smiled again, and it was both like soft moonlight and like a wolf’s grin, “Aren’t they your people? Besides, the folks in the mountains make the most  _ beautiful _ books.”

Samothes wasn’t sure what it was in particular– whether it was Samot’s new demeanor, or his father’s lessons finally beginning to stick, or perhaps the way that Samot, who Samothes had heard being called the Boy-King, brazenly echoed back Samothes’s jealous words with something resembling respect. Whatever it was, in that pause after Samot spoke, the god known as The Artificer Divine, The Undying Fire, The King-God Samothes, stood down.

“Interesting. What about them appeals to you?” he responded, this time not out of wariness or anger, but curiosity.

Samot, raised his eyebrows again, and Samothes for a moment regretted even asking. But, of course, the Boy-King refrained from commenting on the situation, instead moving a hand to the second chair in his room. “Please, sit with me.”

Samothes looked down at the chair, then back to Samot. “Actually,” he said, because he seemed to be full of bad ideas today, “Why don’t you come with me? Into the village. You can try all the wines their public house has to offer, and you can tell me about the people in the mountains.”

The smile on Samot’s face at that was different from the others. “I would like that very much.”

The night was not memorable for the people of what would be Marielda, then the City of First Light. Though the proprietess of the town’s tavern was intrigued by the two strangers, one cloaked in silvery grey and the other in golden ochre, who spent their coin generously and were up until the early morning hours speaking with each other, she did not think much of them in the coming week, much less after that. The only surviving records, deep in the annals of the New Archives, showed little except that the nearby vineyards flourished in the seasons following, right up until the record’s end some few hundred years before the Erasure.

This one night remains untold in the history of mortal folk, kept in the memories of those gods alone. And, honestly, it was very much like Samothes, to want to keep that story to himself.


End file.
